AI Tsar

An excellent question that a client agreed to have me answer here:

“As CTO, my gut tells me that there is a good chance that commodity software development will be taken over by LLMs in the next few years. Most of my teams see AI as only suitable for suggestion and augmentation. I want to drive bold adoption, and am willing to totally renegotiate the software life cycle if necessary. Is it better for me to drive this in detail from the top, or appoint an AI tsar to be the (potentially initially unpopular) face of change?”

Yes, you need a царь, but one in the Catherine the Great mould. After seizing power, she tried out a whole range of innovations: trade regulation, paper money, legal reform, education for women, and more. Lots of these failed (the Nakaz produced a total of zero new laws, for example) but they all served to move the country forward.

No one really understands what LLMs are going to bring us or where the pitfalls are, so your coders need to be experimenting and trying many approaches, failing fast and discarding what doesn’t work. You certainly need senior developers who are willing to work this way and be publicly wrong (an unfortunately rare combination). And the task of finding and guiding them is too big for the CTO.

Your “Catherine” may be an interim or contractor, or a permanent hire, or an internal promotion—don’t discount any source. Yes, she needs a thick skin and the willingness to be unpopular, but you mainly need her to do the heavy lifting, research on new ideas, and constant reminding.

Good luck finding her (and don’t forget to ask for help, it won’t be easy!)